Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an accumulating unit for accumulating individual or signature form sheets conveyed thereto and forming a sheet stacked body, and to a print product production device employing this accumulating unit.
Description of the Related Art
In a rotary press which is a typical device for producing a newspaper form signature (printer folder sheet), as well as it being possible to produce a one section newspaper signature of the kind of an ordinary daily newspaper, it is also possible to produce a multi-section newspaper signature in which a plurality of kinds of section signatures such as, for example, a section signature carrying news of society in general, a section signature carrying local news, and a section signature carrying sports information are overlaid, and the overlaid section signatures are folded in two and formed into a bundle by the outer section signature.
Incidentally, recently, a digital printing newspaper production device is known as a device that is preferable for producing various kinds of newspaper signatures in small numbers of copies without the need for a plate and that does not require large scale facilities like a rotary press, and is disclosed by Patent Document 1 indicated below. Moreover, technology disclosed in Patent Document 2 indicated below is publicly known as a section signature accumulating device that forms a section signature stacked body of overlaid section signatures to be delivered to the next process.
The device disclosed in Patent Document 1 prints a continuous paper supplied from a continuous paper supply unit, by a digital printing unit, and then cuts the printed continuous paper into sheets by a cutting cylinder of a section formation unit and, by cooperation of a folding cylinder and a jaw cylinder, produces, from one sheet or by overlapping a plurality of sheets, a section signature folded in two in a width direction of the sheet (sideways fold). Next, in a section signature accumulating device, the received section signatures are overlaid in an accumulating part to form a section signature stacked body, the section signature stacked body is released from the accumulating part to a delivery mechanism at a timing when a certain number of copies of the section signatures have finished being overlaid, the section signature stacked bodies are intermittently sent forth by the delivery mechanism to a chopper folding mechanism on a downstream side, and the section signature stacked body that has reached a certain chopper folding position is lengthways-folded in the chopper folding mechanism at an appropriate timing to produce a signature form print product.
The technology disclosed in Patent Document 2 relates to a section signature accumulating device and section signature accumulating method that conveys, by a conveyor belt of a variable speed conveyor part, section signatures sent forth N (where N is an integer of 2 or more) copies at a time from a pre-processing unit, distributes the section signatures one copy at a time in a distributing and conveying part and conveys and stocks the section signatures to each of section signature accumulating parts, thereby forming N section signature stacked bodies each having one or more copies of the section signature overlaid in a good posture therein to be delivered to a post-processing unit.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent No. 5252356
[Patent Document 2] Japanese Patent No. 5283237